From Fashion to Fighting Games: An Entrepreneur’s Journey Towards Esports

An Interview with Jinhee Ahn Kim

From Fashion to Fighting Games: An Entrepreneur's Journey Towards Esports

Abraham Kim:
This is Abraham Kim, your host of the Korean American Perspectives podcast.

Abraham Kim:
When I grew up as a young boy, I used to love video games — Gallaga, Qbert, Donkey Kong. Oh God, I think I am dating myself. Well today, video games have not only become incredibly advanced with games like WarCraft or League of Legends, but now, these recreational past-times have become a 1.5 billion dollar competitive industry.

Abraham Kim:
Esports is one of the fastest growing trends in the world, and South Korea is largely considered the birthplace of pro gaming. With millions of people around the globe playing computer games, watching online competitions, and buying merchandise, the rest of the world has started to notice this new phenomenon.

Abraham Kim:
Today I am fortunate to have with me Jinhee Ahn Kim, CEO and cofounder of UYU eSports team.

Abraham Kim:
Jinhee is an amazing creative problem solver who allowed her insatiable curiosity and her amazing ability to find gaps in the marketplace to lead her career from management consulting, fashion, law, education software and now esports. She has had multiple successful careers.

Abraham Kim:
In our interview, we were able to discuss the culture and dynamics of the rapidly-expanding eSports scene and what it’s like to work with pro gamers and how she got involved in the gaming industry.

Abraham Kim:
If you are a young person currently aspiring towards a career in the eSports industry– or maybe you’re just a concerned parent about the prospects of a video game career, Jinhee shares some insights into what it’s like to work in the esports world. Although not everyone can be an esports pro, similar to the entertainment industry or even the sports industry, there are many ways to get involved and make a name for yourself.

Abraham Kim:
We hope you enjoy the engaging conversation with Jinhee Ahn Kim about her life, her career path, and how the esports industry has grown and evolved over time.

Abraham Kim:
Well welcome to the Korean American Perspectives. My name is Abraham Kim, I’m the host of today’s podcast. I’m so honored to have our guest today: Jinhee Ahn Kim, CEO and co-founder of UYU eSports team. Not only is she a successful serial entrepreneur, but also a board member at the Council of Korean Americans. We’re really honored to have you, Jinhee.

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
I’m really happy to be speaking with you today.

Abraham Kim:
Well, Jinhee, let’s start off from the beginning. Tell me about your life. Were you born in Korea or were you born here in the United States?

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
I was born in Korea and I came to the U.S. when I was five years old.

Abraham Kim:
And you came to the United States because of your parents work or what brought you to the United States?

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
Yeah, so my father was teaching martial arts to the U.S. military, really close to the North Korean border. And like early memories are all around, I think it was called Camp Casey around a U.S. military base there. He was invited by the ROTC program at the University of Cincinnati to come over and you know, and help teach them some martial arts. So he came over to Cincinnati in 1968. And then we, my mother and my brother and sister, moved over to Cincinnati back in the late sixties.

Abraham Kim:
Tell me about your family life during that time. Your father was teaching ROTC at the ROTC program at the University of Cincinnati. You grew up and you eventually looked to study premed. Were you pressured or was your family just trying to nurture you to take a particular career route? Like many Korean parents?

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
I was the eldest and then my dad, he was teaching ROTC and before we even moved to the U.S., he opened up a martial arts school. And so he was busy, we didn’t see him very often because those classes usually happen in the evening after work. So my mom was, you know by that time there were four of us, kind of taking care of us and we’re running around the wonder years. We’ve lived in this Midwestern suburb and they had the foresight of moving us to a neighborhood that had excellent, one of the best public school systems in Cincinnati.

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
My parents didn’t really pressure me about a certain path. I think I personally like to just drive and as long as I was enjoying what I was doing or excelling at it I think the medical path was more that was something, like I wasn’t exposed to that many different careers around me besides my father. And all the other martial artists or friends that he had, the other Koreans in the community that they were friends with, were doctors or engineers. I was good at math and science too and so I thought that that might be interesting. So I did look into it and I did do a lot of things when I was in high school that were science or medical-related, but there wasn’t, I didn’t have that pressure. I just kind of thought it might be interesting for a period of time.

Abraham Kim:
Well, so you went to college, you studied premed but you later switched your major to, I believe, economics. And then you chose management consulting as your first career out. I mean, what attracted you to that?

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
Well this was the eighties and it was the time of Wall Street and Gordon Gekko and all of that. It’s interesting when I think about where a lot of the students over the decades, the industries that are popular that a lot of students try to pursue careers in, I think I was a product of that too. I think in the seventies, like advertising and consulting were really popular, right? And then in the eighties, it was all about investment banking. And now, it’s startups, it’s technology. I think every kind of decade has an area that just really excites students back then. But yeah, so at that time you know, a lot of the people, especially the ones that did study economics, were either trying to get jobs in Wall Street or in management consulting. And for me, I thought it was really interesting to go into management consulting because I got to go and study a lot about a particular company or a problem and, and help try to come up with creative business solutions for it. So yes, I started off doing management consulting.

Abraham Kim:
It was a great choice because it led you to your first one of your first ventures into the artistic world, which was the fashion industry. Tell me about that. How did you get involved with the fashion industry?

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
So while I was at college, some of the courses that I did take were in design and those were the courses that I actually liked the most. At one point, I wanted to change my major and pursue trying to become an architect, but I didn’t. So once I was in management consulting, I was going back and forth to New York a lot. I started talking to some people that were working in fashion and just trying learning about about their careers. And I had always really been attracted to the creative part of that business. And so one of the people that I’d reached out to to learn more about their career offered me a position at their company. So I just moved to New York and started working in fashion, at least on the business side of it initially.

Abraham Kim:
But that wasn’t enough because you wanted to also, like you said, you had an attraction to the design aspect of this and you started taking courses at Parsons and then eventually enrolled into Parsons. That’s a fascinating story to tell us. Tell our audience about that story, how you got into Parsons.

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
And so I was working at a company at the time called Liz Claiborne and they were very successful in addressing the career women clothes for career woman. So I was working on a business side of things, but working very closely with the designers and I just kept looking at what they’re doing. I’d go talk to like the pattern makers and the people designing the fabrics and all this. I started thinking I didn’t want to sit here and run the numbers and I’d rather be doing what they’re doing. So I started taking some Saturday drawing classes, charcoal drawing, life drawing. I didn’t know life meant.. I showed up to my first class of life drawing and, you know, they don’t have any clothes on and they’re in front of you posing and you’re supposed to draw them. I was very shocked. But anyways, so I took some Saturday drawing courses and then somehow I found out I had a meeting with the Dean of Parsons. And I went in there with my roll of charcoal drawings from this one class. I’m supposed to have a portfolio, but that was my portfolio, a kind of a roll-up of a few charcoal drawings and had a really nice conversation and I applied and I got accepted to their fashion design program. So I didn’t follow the rules.

Abraham Kim:
Well, I mean, it took a level of curiosity and some gutsiness and persistence and some risk-taking. And you’re launched into a new career.

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
It was so fun. I had such a good time in design school. It was so different from everything that I had studied before, really exercising the right side of the brain. But then since I had the business background too, I can kind of think about things in that way. And so after I went to Parson’s, I did get a job working as a designer. So the funny thing is Ralph, yeah, that’s how I got a job. working for Ralph Lauren and and I was doing knitwear actually men’s sweaters. and, and the funny thing about that too is at that time I didn’t know how to knit at all. So a friend told me that, Hey, you should go and interview.

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
They’re looking for another like assistant designer for the menswear and it’s for knitwear. I don’t know how to knit but she said go ahead and interview anyway. So I did. And I really liked my boss. We got along really well in the interview and there were so many other parts of it besides actually knowing how I did it and I figured it out. I’ll teach myself how to do it. And I did get the job and I did teach myself to knit and I still love, love, love to knit now, but I didn’t have that knowledge when I started.

Abraham Kim:
But do you move around quite a bit? I know you moved from New York to London and at some point you moved to Singapore as well. And then to Hawaii. You’ve moved around quite a bit during your lifetime.

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
Uh, yes. In fact, this is the longest I think I’ve been in one place. So I’m just kinda thinking back to Korea, the first moved to the U.S., and then even in Cincinnati, we moved several times. And I think there’s just something i my DNA where it seems that picking up and going to another place, a new adventure. So from Cincinnati, you know, it was Boston, New York, and we went to Cambridge, England, and then came back, lived in Connecticut for a while, did live in Singapore for a couple of years, went back to Cincinnati, moved to Tokyo, and then that was Honolulu. We were there for a good period of time, about eight years. And then to London. And so I’ve been in London for almost 10 years now, but not really in London. I’m really here at an airport. So yes.

Abraham Kim:
During that time, did you continue to work in the fashion world or did you move on to do other things?

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
So when you’re an expert in some of these countries, it’s really difficult as a spouse to get the right visa to work. So when we’re in Singapore, I had my son and daughter then, and then I wasn’t working then. Volunteering at school and doing a lot of mommy young kids stuff. So then I actually took about, I wasn’t working in Tokyo either, I took about a 10 year break from working. It wasn’t until we moved to Honolulu and I had finished doing all the applications for the kids’ different schools, and then I was like, okay, I’m back in the States now. Now what do I do? I haven’t worked in a really long time. I don’t really know if my brain can function anymore. I know a lot of children’s songs and a lot of children’s TV, but I wasn’t confident that I could get back into the workforce. And then especially in Hawaii. So I decided to apply to school because I just like studying anyway.

Abraham Kim:
That was law school, correct?

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
Yes. So I looked and there was one LSAT left for that year before the application deadline. And so I got the Stanley Kaplan and I studied and studied for like a couple of weeks and then I took the LSAT’s. And I did go to law school in Hawaii and that was just a really, really wonderful experience. One, because the program is wonderful and it’s small. And the students, it’s not like what I imagine law school would be in all those movies and being cutthroat and all that. The community was just really wonderful. And then everyone’s 22 years old and here I am, I think, I was 40 when I started law school. But it was great for me to kind of activate my brain again to study all these really interesting things.

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
And I used to bring my kids with me to lectures and everyone would want to babysit them. The professors would come up and talk to them and people would give me all their notes and their skinnies and all this, cause they’re like, we know you’re really busy with the kids. And so the kids actually loved it when I was going to law school too. So it was a really nice time. And then I went and I wasn’t planning on studying law. I was planning on using it to kind of get myself back into my critical thinking, problem solving. And then I was thinking about using it to go into some type of business. But I ended up working for a law firm for a couple of years and mostly enjoyed that experience. And that was in Honolulu. Yes.

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
Took the bar. I took the bar as well. I did. And I worked at an amazing firm. I think it’s one of the top firms in Hawaii and fantastic people. They’re great partners. I’ve learned so much from them. it, eh, but at the same time I started an early learning curriculum company. and that came out of when I was studying, my older two kids were doing homework, but my youngest was three. She also wanted to do homework like everybody else. And I found, at least in the U.S. there weren’t things that were developmentally appropriate for a really young child and not that I was trying to push her, but she was like sitting there next to us trying to draw and you know, all this. And, and I remember when we were living in Tokyo and I’ve also seen it in Korea, that they have these wonderful books for young children where it was like the size was right for their motor skills at that time.

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
And it was like super engaging for a young child who’s really curious and trying to do things. So I thought, Oh, well there isn’t anything like this here. I like to start developing something like this. So I did so, and I was doing that along with working at the law firm. And at one point I decided to put most of my attention to the early learning startup. And so I left active practice and went more into that. and then that kind of led into as I was working with creating like a curriculum for kinda the preschooler set. And then that’s when the iPhone, iPhone had come out and they announced the app store. And so when I saw that, I thought, Oh, well what I’m doing with this early learning curriculum, this would really translate well to apps because the children could use the, the face of the iPhone and like practice their fine motor skills of tracing letters and numbers and matching things and all that. So we started developing some children’s apps pretty much like we were one of the early ones in the app stores for educational apps.

Abraham Kim:
Well, this children’s app was not your first startup, I mean, it really launched you into another career in the software world. Walk me through that journey through kind of your multiple, I guess, stops along the way, milestones in your software career.

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
So, we were doing the children’s apps and that was when we were in Hawaii and for a lot of different reasons, you know, our kids were starting to go to school on the mainland on the East coast. I would try to go visit my daughter every month and it was like 17 hour flights back and forth, and I said to my husband, “I think maybe we should move closer to the kids,” and so I ended up quite past the East coast, over the Atlantic Ocean – we ended up in London. So, we went a little too far East, we ended up in London and through some different people, found out about a company that had just started and they were making an educational children’s giant website, a learning website. And they brought me on to help them with that. It’s crazy though, at the same time, I had just gone to– Harvard had their first Asian American Alumni Summit, the very first one. And it was an amazing experience. There were like six decades of alumni there from all around the world. And I had met someone that was going to the business school there, Harvard Business School. So I missed this; after we moved to London, I was going around with my daughters trying to explore and at that time, with the iPhone, with the smartphones, a lot of mobile and social apps were becoming popular. So that was back in the day when Four Square was really popular, when you could become the mayor of a coffee shop. And there were things like apps like food spotting, which people took pictures of food at restaurants and would post about it. And Yelp was just starting. Instagram was also just starting. so I was going around with my daughters after I had done all this research about different things like restaurants or shops and when I got out of the black cab, I was like, “I don’t even know, like there’s all these like businesses around me. I wish I could just peek inside, look at my phone and peek inside the stores to see if we want to go into them or not,” right? And then I knew that the technology was there to create an app like this. And so that was my idea, was to use the local and social and picture-taking to help people find products actually near them, not online, if that makes sense. So I had this idea brewing and when I went to the alumni summit I ran into Sarah, she was a first-year Harvard business school, and she was saying she was kind of looking into fashion and entrepreneurship and so I asked her to have coffee with me after the thing and I kind of pitched her this idea I had about this new app that could help you, like find, especially fashion product, in stores around you. And so that’s how that kind of started. We started working on that. At the same time, I started working at the company that was doing the online educational world actually, so yeah, I was doing two things again, wasn’t I? Yes. So with the company I was working for in London, they were creating, I don’t know if you remember, this might be too young for your kids, but those like Club Penguin, where all the little kids were playing, they would go in a world and interact with each other. It was very social, but they were trying to put an educational layer onto that. But, as I was talking to them, I said, you know, “The iPad just came out, I think this is a great tool and you should really think about utilizing that for things like children’s education.” And so the CEO, they kind of said, “Okay, well we’re going to split it. We’re going to have this like the online web world, and then we’ll create a department to start doing mobile apps. So, which would you like to do?” I’m like, okay, mobile apps of course. So, I went on to help them create, I think when I was there we did about 20 different children’s apps for the company before I I left to just focus on Snapette cause we had ended up getting funded. We went to an accelerate and got funded and then at that time I was like, “I can’t split my time between both.”

Abraham Kim:
I just want to pause here and just kind of reflect on your career and really how your brain works. Where not only do you have a creative side but you see a problem and you just really pull from all your different background and experiences in your life and then you apply it to solve that problem. You see a gap and then you try to fill that gap. I’m wondering, you know you’ve raised children, you’ve mentored I’m sure many people, how do you teach that? How do you teach and develop that talent of really not thinking about issues in a linear fashion, but really seeing patterns or seeing how different elements come together. Do you feel like in your background helped you prepare for these kinds of situations and how did that all come together?

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
I think maybe just being thrown into moving around a lot when I was young being thrown into different situations or maybe because I have different perspectives than other people. Let me think, it’s hard question. I mean the great thing about the liberal arts education and I used to kind of go right, right, right when they force you to take a lot of different classes. And this was kind of drilled into me pretty early on in college, is that it wasn’t necessarily the subject, but it was the courses we were trying to teach you. What I was supposed to get out of it was how to think about a problem, like from a scientific perspective or social scientist perspective or an artist perspective, right? And so for me, I’ve always been really curious about solving problems in a different way so I don’t know if there’s a way to teach that. That’s a hard question.

Abraham Kim:
Or maybe just because, like you said, have been not only exposed to different kinds of issues because your work has taken you to different places, but also the fact that you moved around in different countries.

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
And I never fit in anywhere either, just like a square peg. Like wherever I was, I mean not that I felt like, “Oh, woe is me,” but like when I think about the environments, there’s always like, “I’m like different from everyone.” Maybe that helps me think about opportunities when problems present themselves.

Abraham Kim:
I mean, just as an outside observer, I think that’s your superpower; the ability to look at a problem and then slice it in different ways and then look at it and then how to bring all these different and creative element, obviously the business element, and the people element, and how to bring those elements or those ingredients together to create a business or several or move an issue forward. I want to take a big leap forward and get into another step of your career, which is your eSports career and how you founded UYU. Tell me about that journey, about how you started your career in eSports and founded this team.

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
So, I know eSports is like such a buzzy thing right now, right? I think that the journey goes back to Korea. Back about, I guess in 2008-10, even when we were in Hawaii, I remember kind of getting introduced to Korean dramas, like one of my friends in law school was really crazy about it and I was like, I don’t have time to watch it. I didn’t understand what was so crazy about it, right. But that’s kind of when Korean dramas and then, you know, later Korean music, all of that started permeating audiences outside of Korea. And so back in 2010 actually, I had a site where it was all about Korean dramas and Korean music and I was kind of running it myself, trying to learn how, that’s when I was getting those books about how to do websites and things. And so I’ve been really fascinated by a lot of the pop culture that was coming out of Korea, whether it was fashion or music, also beauty. But eSports was also really gaining ground, really very popular in Korea. And so I was following it back then. It wasn’t until more recently that it intrigued me as something that I could be a part of. I think what happened was after I sold the fashion tech startup, I had a period of time where I was mentoring different startup founders and kind of exploring different areas that I might want to pursue. One of them was a K-Beauty type of thing, but with eSports. My son, he’s a big gamer and he has been really using the platform Twitch a lot, it’s a live-streaming platform. And he had also been helping different streamers there, trying to land different sponsorships and I found it a really interesting new way of getting entertainment. And at the time when Twitch was you know, was gaining popularity, it was mostly people who gained on there and streaming their gameplay. And so this was really fascinating to me that we were having another new platform, you know. You went from like radio to TV network, TV and then to cable and from cable to video on demand, which is YouTube, and then now we have live streaming as another way to consume entertainment. And every time you have one of these, you know, platform shifts, like there’s a need for a lot of content. And so that really intrigued me about my streaming and about the gaming culture around it. I also was really fascinated by the culture of gaming, I think it touches every person. I know my husband’s pretty much, I call him a hardcore gamer, cause he’s been gaming ever since the Nintendo everything. And he still games all the time, like very late into the night and the kids, too. So I think gaming has touched many generations now, and it’s a really big part of people’s socializing, relaxing, all of that, and that it would be that the culture of it really intrigued me. And I saw the growth opportunities there in terms of addressing content, and also the fashion part of me got really intrigued about gaming as almost like a subculture that then becomes like, it’s like surfing, right? It’s like skateboarding. It’s like hip hop. Like these were, or even punk for them. And they were like subcultures within a group and then they became like much more mainstream. And that part of gaming also intrigued me. And so when my son was starting to like work on this eSports idea, I kind of pushed it like, “let me join you,”and do like my experience and you’ve got like the gaming and the community experience and let’s bring it together. And he was really against it for a long time, but it’s working out, it’s working out well now. I know right, kind of keep it on the down low. We keep it on the down low, but yeah it does.

Abraham Kim:
How is working with your son on your current event?

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
For me? Great. I think that question you should direct at my son, my daughters were like, “Oh, so weird. He keeps calling you Jen,” like, you know, and so he’ll have to switch the mom to the business partner. And for a while, I had also learned to switch off the mom and as the business partner. But I think after a couple months we got into a good way. You know, I think there are a lot of businesses with family members, right? I mean through generations and things. So yeah, it’s fine for me, I think for him it’s more challenging.

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
And so we started off in fighting games. One: a couple of reasons, like fighting games have this long legacy from the arcade days. And I think even when I was in college, I remember they had some arcade cabinets and there were some fighting games on there. So like they’ve been around for a really long time, but I think it’s because it just made sense to me in that I grew up around TaeKwonDo, martial arts all the time and you know, going to tournaments. It was like digitizing what I had experienced as a child. I think in terms of it as an eSport, I think it’s something that’s very easy for viewers to understand even if they don’t actually play, unlike a lot of the other like multiplayer games. We thought there would be really great stories to tell around the different players because it’s one-versus-one. So, it’s like the WWE, right? Or you’ll see you have individuals that you can tell stories about versus like a team of five that are behind the screens and the headsets and it’s harder to tell interesting stories around them. And it was an easier entry point in terms of like financially, like to try to get into some of these other more popular games like the CSGOs or League of Legends, you have to be extremely well funded. And since we were funding this ourselves, the fighting games community makes a lot more sense to start off in before we expand to others. But, fighting games do speak to my heart in that, you know, my dad and just everything that we grew up in and also the Koreans are at least in a couple of, like Tekken, one of the more popular ones there. They’re known as the strongest players in the world.

Abraham Kim:
Do you have a favorite game that you like to play?

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
I like to watch. I do like to watch Tekken and I think it’s one of the fighting games. I think it’s just beautiful, well done. But, I don’t have that much time to play. I get to watch everyone else. Like again, I’m not one of those true gamers. So yeah, once again, going into something that I don’t do well myself, like designing sweaters and not knowing how to. Like I think last December, we were streaming at the world championships and we were trying to raise money for a charity and if we hit a certain amount, one of my top pros, he was going to try to teach me how to play Tekken, and it was actually pretty comical cause I was like, “what, what button?”.

Abraham Kim:
How do you recruit for something like this? When you started your team, how did you recruit for your team?

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
So, Drew has been in the community and he’s been following a lot of the top players and so that was one. We also got to know some of the more influential people in the community and we’re getting some advice from them. And then with the players, you can watch a lot of the competitions, most of them stream as well, so you can see what their personalities are like. There’s like a world tour, so you see their standings at different tournaments. So for us, we looked at a lot of different factors. We didn’t like to go for the top players, we went for the ones that were just, we thought, on the cusp of becoming great players if they were given the opportunity and the support, meaning like we allow them to travel around the world to compete. And then we also looked at personalities like do they have some kind of factor that we think they’ll be very engaging for the community, to not only watch great gameplay but also like to cheer for them as people, and so that’s kind of how we go. [We] went around and scouted, at least for the fighting game. I think Drew does a really great job of scouting young talent. We branched out into team games, ones called Call of Duty. And so last year, Drew scouted an amateur team. and last year the Call of Duty went into this transition. Now it’s a fully franchise league, but they went into this transition last year where only the top 16 teams ended up [being] allowed to play in their pro league. And so this amateur team that Drew had scouted qualified for one of those 16 spots when a lot of really, really well-known teams did not. So, I think he has a really good talent for just finding young talent that given the right support, can really level up and shine. And so that’s kind of been our, I guess, that’s been our mission. To go around and support up and coming people.

Abraham Kim:
I’ve heard that these teams fairly tend to be male-dominated and that you do see some female gamers, but not many. Have you seen improvements or changes in recent years or do you have any advice for young women that would like to go into gaming as a profession?

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
Yeah, so it is, at least on the pro level, it is heavily male-dominated. We try to encourage more you know, women participation. For our team, we have one of the top female Tekken players. And we also have great Street Fighter players. We’ve also been encouraging a lot of women to also come on as content creators, so they don’t reach the pro levels, but they are very good and they’re streaming their gameplay. There’s also a lot of women in, not as pro players, but in business and staff roles and our org has that heavily; we have a lot of women staff, staff members. It’s the topic of women in gaming. There’s been a lot of articles. There’s been a lot of panels on it and things. It’s got a long way to go. I mean, online gaming in itself, the community can be extremely toxic not, only to women, but to all different types of people. Because you’re just hiding behind your keyboard and it’s really, I think, not for the faint of heart. And I think organizations, certain community members, certain groups, are doing more and more to try to give support to women and underrepresented groups within gaming. Yes, so it’s an ongoing struggle. And I think the women that are there right now leading, there’s a lot, it’s a lot on their shoulders to be role models, to put up with a lot of the stuff that they have to put up with. A lot of them end up leaving the scene because of all the harassment and whatnot. So yeah, I can’t believe it’s 2020 and we’re still — this is the way it is. But with that said, I think that the more women we give opportunities to, whether to supporting as pro gamers or supporting as content creators, supporting as staff, staff members tournament organizers, photographers, prefers doing marketing, all of that, will help to slowly change the environment, I hope.

Abraham Kim:
I’m cognizant of the time. Maybe a couple more questions before we conclude here. Just for those folks who are aspiring to pursue a career or at least explore a career in professional eSports, do you have any recommendations or any steps that one should take if they want to enter into this career?

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
Yeah, so you know, I think that when people think of eSports career, they are only thinking about the pro player, right? And you do read all those articles about the young kid who became a millionaire playing Fortnite. And those are all the articles you read about, right? But I kind of liken it to if someone says that they want to go into the entertainment industry and then you’re just thinking of being an actor or an actress, right? Because that’s, that’s the most you know, but like the entire movie and TV industry, there’s so many opportunities in that, right? So with eSports career, when you say that, there’s only a few people that are going to rise to the level of being able to make a career out of gaming professionally, right?

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
It’s like if you’re playing basketball in your playground with your friends and not everyone’s going to make it to be a pro, but I think that if you are someone that is really interested and passionate about gaming and you wanna have a career in it and your gaming skills are not that you’re gonna be able to be a pro gamer, to pursue any of the other things that you are interested in. Because we’ve got lawyers that specialize in gaming issues. We’ve got, like I said, videographers, photographers, we’ve got graphic artists that designed for the teams and people who are interested in fashion doing work for eSports organizations, consultants. Like anything that you’re actually good or interested in, you can turn that into an eSports career if you’re also passionate and about gaming. It’s such a growing scene, there’s going to be more and more opportunities and you know, financial rewards from it going into the future.

Abraham Kim:
Jinhee, I’m curious, what’s next? Any other future plans? What’s your future plans after or is this something that you feel like you’re going to continue for the foreseeable future?

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
I think there’s a lot of opportunities within gaming and right now we’ve got the organization that we’re supporting. we’re kind of looking at some ancillary opportunities within the gaming sphere, but I like to stay in this area for the next 10, 15 years. I just think that there’s so many things every year, something comes up that we didn’t really think about, right. And so yeah, it’s exciting. I love working with all the young people and there’s a great energy. I mean, it is a lot of the fans, the pros. There’s just really great, great energy in it and there’s great creative minds coming into it and bringing different experiences. So it’s an exciting area to be in right now, and I think going into the future.

Abraham Kim:
A final question I have is taking it all the way back to the beginning of our podcast interview. If you could talk to your 18-year-old self, what would you tell the 18-year-old Jinhee?

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
Oh my gosh, I’m so old now. “You’re forty years old!” I would say to myself, dream bigger. take more risks. Enjoy your youth and have a lot more fun than I did. Don’t take yourself so seriously and you know, think things are gonna work out. I think when I was 18, I was a very serious person and I was always working hard, studying hard and yes, I had friends and things, but I didn’t really take that many risks about different things and kind of looking back, I wish that I had, it’s not confidence, but just do more — just maybe have more fun. I just tell that to myself right now, too, [cause I’m always] working. I should learn to enjoy the time that I’m in right now, too. So as an 18-year-old, in your early twenties is as stressful as it seems, and as serious as all your tests or the job or this and that. Like, everything’s so serious and you think every move that you’re gonna make is gonna, well, it does affect you, but like, there are so many different ways your path can go. And so I would have told myself, have more fun, relax a bit, laugh a little bit more and I should tell myself that.

Abraham Kim:
Well on that note to relax and have a little more fun is a great way to end our podcast here today. Well, Jinhee, thank you very much for your time and we appreciate you sharing your life with us as well as your wisdom, pieces of wisdom that you’ve learned throughout your mini-careers throughout your lifetime. I think you need to write an autobiography someday.

Jinhee Ahn Kim:
Thank you for having me. It was fun.

Abraham Kim:
I hope you enjoyed this interview with Jinhee Ahn Kim. Certainly a pleasure hearing about all of the various industries she’s worked in over the last couple of decades and how she balances and incorporates her gaming career with her family. It was particularly interesting to hear about how she is finding joy in working with her son in her current eSports endeavor.

Abraham Kim:
As this dynamic industry continues to grow, I’m certain that Jinhee and her team, UYU, will make a huge mark. Maybe you’ll see them in the sports section of a national newspaper or on ESPN in the near future.

Abraham Kim:
Well thank you again for listening to this episode of the Korean American Perspectives podcast.

Abraham Kim:
As always, we ask that you please subscribe to our podcast and visit our website at councilka.org.

Introduction

This week’s episode of Korean American Perspectives features Jinhee Ahn Kim, CEO and Co-Founder of UYU eSports.

Jinhee Ahn Kim is a serial entrepreneur who has allowed her insatiable curiosity and her amazing ability to find gaps in the marketplace to lead her career from management consulting, fashion, law, education software, and now eSports. In our interview, Jinhee shares about rapidly-expanding gaming scene and what it’s like to work with pro gamers, as well as how she first got involved in the gaming industry.

Esports is one of the fastest-growing trends in the world, and South Korea is largely considered the birthplace of pro gaming. With millions of people around the globe playing computer games, watching online competitions, and buying merchandise, the rest of the world has started to notice this new phenomenon.